PREMIERE: Maston Tours Mid-Century Film Scores in “Rain Dance”

The Allah-Las/Jacco Gardner associate gets kosmiche.

Frank Maston plays with the Allah-Las and Jacco Gardner, a pair of familiar names, but the music he makes on his own and releases under his surname is something both recognizable and totally foreign. Taking as many cues from mid-century film—think the seen-it-all drama of Morricone, the borderline kitschy romance of Michel Legrand’s Vivre sa vie score—as he does from the retro-pop worlds of his side gigs, Maston’s music suggests an imagined version of an actual era.

Today, we’re premiering the video for Maston’s “Rain Dance,” which is taken from his new record Tulips, out October 27 via Phonoscope. The song begins with a hoovering organ drone and a snaking desert melody, but after expanding into a kind of soft raga, it seems to wander through crowded streets and deep into Haight-Ashbury. The deceptively complex video follows suit, as a series of simple projections expands and contracts and wheel around one another in synchronization with the music. The whole thing feels like it could’ve been a demonstration at a mid-’60s world’s fair, lifted whole cloth and sewn into the present moment. Check it out below.

Tulips is out October 27. You can preorder the digital version here and the physical here.